22 Stripes
by bright snow
Summary: 22 bite-sized ficlets centered on Jinx. Mild angst, largely contrariness.


**22 Stripes**

_Summary: 22 bite-sized ficlets centered on Jinx. Mild angst, largely contrariness._

_A/N: Found these while cleaning out my files. Enjoy!_

* * *

><p><strong>You Don't Have To<strong>

She bares her teeth at him.

"I don't like you," she spits.

"That's fine," he says, smiling.

* * *

><p><strong>Useless Efforts<strong>

Because he is the sun, and he is always back every moment to warm her frozen heart, no matter how many times she tells him that the seed has long since died. But he does not leave, just smiles, and even takes to watering the broken frozen seed of love in her heart.

* * *

><p><strong>Her Back<strong>

Her back is turned to him, which is fine. There is no greater sign of trust, and he isn't about to overlook it. No matter what, he'll have her back until the day he dies.

* * *

><p><strong>Old Habits Die Hard<strong>

Her expression is harder than most to figure out, not only because of her lack of eyebrows, but also because of her annoying habit of closing off her heart and adapting a detached, narrow-eyed look of distinctly displeasured boredom.

"Stop that," he says, when he catches her slipping into that hated expression.

"You don't make any sense," she replies, exasperated.

* * *

><p><strong>How Dare He<strong>

He slept, with the most peaceful expression she'd ever seen.

She wanted to break his nose.

* * *

><p><strong>Call Her a Cynic, But-<strong>

Jinx decides the thing she hates most about heroes is their honesty. Or rather, their lack of it. Because, really. If you can't even have the good guy fess up his identity, how do you expect people to trust you when you tell them to jump off a skyscraper and that you'll catch them? That they're safe from the train bomber, that bank robber, that you'll take care of everything don't you worry sweetheart I've got this under control? Trust a guy in a mask, in a stupid spandex costume, hiding his identity from the world?

Right.

She supposes that this is perfectly fine for the idiot masses of the world, the stupid baaing sheep, but people like her? Yeah. She'd take the criminal, the villain, the degenerates any day.

Because with them, you can at least expect them to lie.

* * *

><p><strong>Reincarnation<strong>

She tells him that since the day she was born, she had been condemned to a lifetime of bad luck. He looks at her, straight in the eye, and tells her that from this moment on is the start of her new life.

* * *

><p><strong>On Raven's Birthday<strong>

"Hey, birthday girl," she says, grinning, free—for once—of any malice.

And then all hell breaks loose.

("You can't expect me to know all the shit you goddamned heroes get up to before I even—before I even 'turned good,' okay? I don't have all that goddamned time to waste to track your every move, regardless of how _successful_ all my goddamned planning was. And ever since I've gotten all those shitty ass civilians to save from big bad villains now, I'm not about to start combing and memorizing all your illustrious histories!")

* * *

><p><strong>Stop Thinking like a Villain, Girl<strong>

She thinks the moment she is free from the ropes they'd trussed her up in, she's going to kick out their teeth. This desire keeps her patient.

* * *

><p><strong>There is So Much Wrong with Her<strong>

"It's not funny."

"No one said it was." He is earnest. Serious.

"Then stop laughing at me!"

"No one's laughing, Jinx."

"Then it was a bad joke."

* * *

><p><strong>Time to Go Chicago-Style<strong>

He's forever ruined ketchup and mustard for her.

God_dammit_.

* * *

><p><strong>The Day He Leaves<strong>

She tries not to show any of her angergriefshamedespair, because that would've meant she had cared (and obviously he had never even thought of _this_ as anything).

* * *

><p><strong>Cornered<strong>

Can't get away, can't run—he's faster than her, and she knows it, oh does she know it, and he knows she knows it.

* * *

><p><strong>That's Just the Way it is<strong>

She's been sitting idle in her rathole of a youth hostel for days, and she feels it, feels it deep in her bones how bad luck is just building and building within her, spiraling in from everywhere around her. She'll have to do something soon, or something ludicrous is going to happen, like the whole complex building collapsing in on her, but the _reason_ why she's been idle for so long is almost too embarrassing to even consider.

Is she good, or bad?

And sometimes, when she is reflecting on this, a tiny voice in her head likes to pipe up that maybe her powers work like magnets do—maybe she had just been born overflowing with too much good luck such that all the bad luck would just swarm to her, like electrons to a proton (and oh, how she wishes, vainly, that that would be true).

Maybe she doesn't have to be bad.

* * *

><p><strong>Blast Radius<strong>

Because she needs to be in _control_ of her life, to wrest as much out of Fate's unyielding hands as she can. She is _independent_, and she can handle her own damn self, thank you very much. So no pity, sweetheart. No pity. That feeling of being looked down upon, of being patronized—it is pathetic, and she hates it, and she does not need it.

(And she is so hell-bent on blasting away as much pity as she can that she misses the empathy, the sympathy, the understanding. She misses it because she blows it all away, keeps it all as far away from her as she can because she has been hurt too many times and this is the only way she knows how to keep herself safe.)

* * *

><p><strong>This Wide, Wonderful, Wrongheaded World<strong>

How many times had their date been side-tracked by his fans? He loved attention—that was just how he was. Flirted when he didn't mean it, didn't see her frustrated disgust past his adoring fans. He was full of himself, and she knew it.

And she still stayed with him.

(Because he has just so recently torn apart her whole world as she knew it, and she just cannot stand and face the harsh world when she has been so recently reborn, pink and weak and frail and wobbly. Because even if he leaves her so many times, she can only sit and wait for him, because she is new in this world and stripped raw of any protection she had before, and she does not know how to survive. Not yet.)

* * *

><p><strong>(So Maybe There is Good in Her)<strong>

Her tenuous good luck finally runs out.

There's nothing left to keep all the bad luck from rushing into her, consuming her, and she can't believe her last thought is "but did all the little kids get away safely."

* * *

><p><strong>In the Greying Twilight<strong>

But she knows she cannot stay in this gray area for long, because when you have powers, you cannot just sit still on neither side. It is impossible to keep yourself with those powers neither good nor bad. It is like trying to bridge a chasm with no rope, no wood, no anything, an impossibly deep, dark chasm that separates good and bad.

It just doesn't work that way. And Jinx knows it. Oh, does she know it. It is only a matter of time before she has to decide which side she is going to be on.

Once and for all.

* * *

><p><strong>A Sensitive Soul<strong>

"You're better than this. Just think about it."

And she just smiles all the wider, pink lighting up her eyes.

"Looks like your luck's run out, bucko." And then she laughs, deranged and more than just a little half-crazed. "Because I don't think at all."

Because if she did, she would be crying every moment of the day, and nothing would ever stay in one piece, and this is why her plans don't work, and how she would've been better as a therapist and not at all in this constant fight of good and evil.

* * *

><p><strong>Girl, Take a Chill Pill<strong>

"Jinx—"

_"What?!"_ she roars at him, teeth gleaming sharp in the dim light. He grins back at her, smile smarmy and stretched impossibly large.

"I signed you up for yoga class—"

"I don't _need_ classes on friggin' relaxation!"

"—and it's starting in two minutes and six seconds!"

"WHAT?!"

* * *

><p><strong>A Rotten Core<strong>

"Jinx," he says quietly, desperately. "Come here, okay?"

She cocks her head at him, manic smile still plastered on her ashen skin. "Why don't'cha just come over here? It'll be a lot faster, right?"

* * *

><p><strong>Mind the Gap<strong>

Because now, she is even more unstable than ever. Old habits die hard, after all, but because he keeps pulling her, refuses to let go, she is forever in limbo, stuck between _good_ and _bad_. And now that she does not have an easy outlet for negativity—because she had never been _taught_ how to deal with negativity the _right_ way, the _good_ way, all that energy just builds and builds the time she is "good," and because he keeps pulling, and the negativity just keeps _spiking_, and her control is always hanging by tooth and nail, there are days she will hug him, spontaneously. There are days when she will hug him, like a drowning person clings to land. And then there are days when she will hug him, and not two moments later, hex him point-blank, straight in the back (and those are the days that she'd just laugh and laugh and laugh, tears rolling piteously down her ashen face, bony, delicate fingers clamping onto his arm, _don't leave me don't go_, and he doesn't know what to _do_ except to keep doggedly pulling, so all he can do is stay and let her dig sharp, brittle nails into his arm (and she is freezing, always _freezing_, and even his extreme body heat cannot keep her icy chill at bay).

* * *

><p><em>End.<em>


End file.
